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Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid (97) and Detroit Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider (53) battle along the boards for a loose puck during a game in  Edmonton, Alberta, on Jan. 30.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2025

The NHL could’ve had a good year if not for tariffs

In 2016, the league denied an expansion franchise to Quebec, citing the "state and volatility of the Canadian dollar.”
While DeepSeek's low-cost AI has attracted businesses, security experts warn that patching these vulnerabilities can be expensive and still less secure than Silicon Valley's more expensive models.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2025

The DeepSeek AI revolution has a security problem

The AI model that shocked Silicon Valley by doing more with less might be doing too little on safety. That could hurt its business prospects.
U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza proposal is a reckless plan that would forcibly displace Palestinians, destabilize neighboring countries, empower Iran and and hinder any long-term peace efforts.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2025

Trump’s Gaza plan is a crazy answer to a valid question

It is a propsal that will love Israel to death, revive Iran to life and destabilize every American friend.
A banner belonging to the "Alley of Angels" project displays images of children purportedly killed in conflict, at a demonstration of far-right groups in Frankfurt, Germany, on May 25, 2024.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 19, 2025

How a Moscow-linked exhibit tried to erode German support for Ukraine

Publicly, the exhibit’s organizers say they aren’t affiliated with any government and are driven by a desire to end the suffering.
Serbian demonstrators block the main boulevard in the central Serbian city of Kragujevac on Saturday, continuing months long calls for government accountability and reforms.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2025

The new face of global protests

Young Serbs understand that neither justice nor democracy is possible until the tables have been cleared.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged troops for a Ukraine peacekeeping force, but Britain and its military lack the resources to deliver.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2025

Starmer offers Ukraine a defense check it can't cash

Under Starmer’s leadership, there has been no sign that the U.K. is ready to expand its armed forces to the numbers that could sustain such a campaign.
The rapid advance of artificial intelligence and technology threatens traditional human life and values, but finding a balance between innovation and preserving human connection may offer a path forward for humanity's future.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 19, 2025

Does humanity have a future in the virtual and AI age?

The virtual age and artificial intelligence are making traditional ways of life seem increasingly obsolete, and this will only grow with AI's spread.
The poet and essayist Kamo no Chomei wrote “Hojoki” in 1212 after bearing witness to a series of natural and man-made disasters. His experiences caused him to withdraw into a hermetic lifestyle.
LIFE / Language
Feb 20, 2025

Attempting the classics: Deciphering impermanence in ‘Hojoki’

With modern-day aids, this 13th-century piece of text isn't as challenging as you may think.
Rebel fighters with the Rwanda-backed M23 militia secure Congolese soldiers who had surrendered in Goma, Congo, on Jan. 30.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2025

Sanctions on Rwanda alone won't stop war in DRC

Past peace efforts collapsed as Rwanda accused the DRC of sheltering the FDLR, a Hutu militia tied to the 1994 Tutsi genocide.
The Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia on July 1, 2016
WORLD
Feb 20, 2025

In Russia, dozens of dissenters are held as psychiatric patients

The practice carries echoes of a method of control used widely in the Soviet Union and known as "punitive psychiatry."
In Sakaiminato, Tottori Prefecture, an entire street is dedicated to Japanese spirits, monsters and ghouls — a sign that the overall region is rich in spine-tingling tourist draws.
LIFE / Travel
Feb 22, 2025

Shimane and Tottori to bewitch tourists with supernatural charms

The two prefectures are leaning on spooky folklore to draw more travelers.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Thursday.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Feb 21, 2025

Trump tightens grip on independent agencies, testing limits of presidential power

The agencies have for years taken pride in their independence overseeing such matters as elections, stock markets and labor unrest.
David Moreton, a former professor at Tokushima University, originally came to Japan as a missionary in 1988. He is now one of the world’s foremost experts on the Shikoku 88-Temple Pilgrimage.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 24, 2025

How a Canadian missionary found spiritual transformation in Shikoku

David Moreton has devoted decades to researching southern Japan’s famed 88-temple pilgrimage, established by influential monk Kobo Daishi.
While Osaka’s 2025 World Expo may strengthen Japan’s global ties through diplomatic engagements, its success will depend on fostering long-term innovation, economic cooperation and international collaboration beyond visitor numbers.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 25, 2025

Will Expo 2025 in Osaka be a success?

Osaka has hosted the Expo twice before, in 1970 and 1990, with the 1970 affair in particular occupying a special place in many local residents’ hearts.
Taiwanese comic artist Rishiazao and interpreter Yun-wen Huang greet an attendee at the 2025 Angouleme International Comics Festival in France.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 1, 2025

Taiwan comics on the rise: Local storytellers, global aspirations

A supportive ecosystem and eager audiences — both domestic and global — are boosting the soft power of illustrated narratives from Taiwan.
Barbara Broccoli, whose family has been the longtime stewards of the James Bond franchise, worries that Amazon's control will turn it into mass-produced "content," prioritizing quantity over quality and undermining its cinematic prestige.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2025

Amazon wants to turn 'James Bond' into slop

Barbara Broccoli, a custodian of the "James Bond" franchise, told friends she doesn’t trust algorithm-centric Amazon with a character she helped to mythologize.
Kumi Takiuchi plays a prostitute talking about her life’s pains and pleasures in detail to a psychiatrist in “Reveal.”
CULTURE / Film
Mar 4, 2025

‘Reveal’: Kumi Takiuchi’s performance stuns in one-woman film

Kazuyoshi Okuyama’s powerful drama about a sex worker baring her soul features its lead actor emoting nearly nonstop with no cuts.
Ayako Sono
JAPAN
Mar 4, 2025

Japanese writer Ayako Sono dies at 93

Renowned Japanese writer Ayako Sono, known for many best-selling novels and essays, died of natural causes at a Tokyo hospital. She was 93.
“May You Have Delicious Meals” focuses on a trio of young office workers at the same workplace who have mixed feelings for food and each other.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 8, 2025

‘May You Have Delicious Meals’: The ugly taste of office and gender politics

The English-language debut of Junko Takase’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel serves complex prose in translation by Morgan Giles.
“The Place of Shells” takes place mostly in Gottingen, Germany, where both the author and the book's narrator live, while also jumping both geographically and temporally to Sendai, Japan, through memories of the 3/11 disaster and its aftermath.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2025

Grief ebbs and flows between two tragedies in 'The Place of Shells'

Mai Ishizawa’s debut novel, which won one of the three Akutagawa Prizes awarded in 2021, is also her first to be released in English, translated by Polly Barton.
Shizuko Nishio — who will turn 86 on March 10, when Japan will commemorate 80 years after the bombing of Tokyo — gives an explanation in February in front of a map showing the areas that were burned in the air raids.
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2025

'Eerie' sky, charred bodies: 80 years since Tokyo's World War II firestorm

Because of the atomic bombings and Japan's surrender a month later, the firebombing of Tokyo is often overlooked in history.
Many in Japan are increasingly concerned that under the Trump administration's shifting policies, the U.S. may no longer be a reliable ally, raising fears of a weakened security partnership amid rising threats from China and Russia.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 11, 2025

Japan reels from — and steels for — U.S. policy shifts

“What Japan has learned from the Ukraine war is that the era where we could rely entirely on the U.S. is over.”
Sources say a hui suo — a private club, which in Japan caters mainly to Chinese businesspeople — will soon open on the upper floors of the Moutai Building in the Ginza district of Tokyo.
JAPAN / Society
Mar 16, 2025

Private clubs quietly open in Tokyo for free-spending Chinese businesspeople

With the economy weak in China and opportunities harder to come by there, more wealthy individuals have been flocking to Japan.
“Ravens” stars Tadanobu Asano as Masahisa Fukase, a real-life figure who was known for his photos of the psychedelic party scene of 1960s Shinjuku, portraits of his wife and images of the ravens of his home prefecture of Hokkaido.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 14, 2025

‘Ravens’ is a portrait of art, love and inner demons

Director Mark Gill brings the turbulent life of celebrated photographer Masahisa Fukase into focus in his new film.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s public humiliation tactics, such as belittling foreign leaders and political opponents, mirror those of dictators like Stalin and Mao, reflecting his authoritarian tendencies.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 14, 2025

Fear and loathing in the Oval Office

Trump should be thought of as a dilettante despot, the Roman emperor of reality TV.
President Donald Trump’s order making English the official language of the country is unnecessary, as nearly 80% of people in the U.S. already speak it at home.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 14, 2025

America doesn’t need an official language

After all, what is our shared culture if not the mix of cultures — including languages — that make and remake America every day?
Passengers that were on a morning train attacked by members of the Aum Shinrikyo group wait for medical assistance outside Kasumigaseki Station on March 20,1995.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Mar 17, 2025

The day a religious cult brought terror to Tokyo

Thirty years after Aum Shinrikyo attacked Tokyo’s subways, the nation continues to prepare for the unthinkable.
A soldier stands guard at a railway station in the Sibi district of southwestern Balochistan province, Pakistan, on March 12 as part of a security operation after militants hijacked a passenger train the previous day.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 19, 2025

Pakistan’s economy is back. But so is terrorism.

The disconnect between the grim drumbeat of terror attacks on the country’s margins and the positive economic news from its heartland is startling.
Outgoing International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach delivers a speech during the 144th IOC Session in Costa Navarino, Greece, ahead of an election to determine his successor.
OLYMPICS
Mar 20, 2025

Strange race to lead Olympic sports gets stranger

Smear campaigns have targeted some of the leading contenders in the final days before the vote, scheduled for Thursday in Greece.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, at the White House on Feb. 24. American conservatives want Europe to take on more military responsibility but often scorn its structure, making France the strongest candidate for leadership.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 20, 2025

Why U.S. conservatives should fall in love with France

For American conservatives who sincerely want a capable Europe, just supporting European populism is not enough.

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight